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Article: New AIDS Theory Devised on Computer
- Article from:
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Article date:
- August 3, 1992
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1992 Chicago Sun-Times. (Hide copyright information)
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A typical AIDS investigator tests the power of experimental drugs
or vaccines in a test tube, in chimps or even in human patients.
But Robert May and Martin Nowak of Oxford University are not
typical AIDS researchers. They work on a desktop computer.
With that computer the two mathematical biologists have arrived
at a remarkable new theory of how the human immunodeficiency virus,
or HIV, causes AIDS.
Full-blown AIDS, they say, is not a gradual dismantling of a
patient's immune system by HIV; it is a catastrophic event, triggered
when the infecting virus diversifies into so many different strains
that the immune system is suddenly overwhelmed.